


falling suns

by Keturagh



Series: False Fruit [14]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Developing Relationship, Drunkenness, F/M, Halamshiral (Dragon Age), Mindfuck, Public Masturbation, Semi-Public Sex, The Winter Palace (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:34:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21997387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keturagh/pseuds/Keturagh
Summary: The fire was hot. It brought a heat like sun against her skin.“What do you want…?” she asked.“Lay back. Close your eyes. Then continue as you are.”She adjusted as he asked. She brought one foot up to the seat, finding her breathing deeper and better. The scents of perfumes did not bother her as much. Instead she smelled oak smoking in the fireplace. With her eyes closed, she heard the flames crackling behind him. It was soothing.“Harder,” his voice was low, but came into the dark space of her mind clearly.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Fen'Harel/Female Inquisitor, Fen'Harel/Female Lavellan, Fen'Harel/Inquisitor, Fen'Harel/Lavellan, Lavellan/Solas (Dragon Age)
Series: False Fruit [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579504
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	falling suns

The most magnificent of wonders in the largest city of the Dales, when the Dales were ruled by elves, was the temple of Elgar’nan: vast and hallowed, its arched walls open to the eyes of Elgar’nan’s father, the sun. Tree branches heavy with white flowers bowed through the temple walls. Flags patted the east wind as it past, much like the sounds of the aravels when the summer breeze kicks up. And the stone steps ascending to the temple doors were always warm; many cats would lounge there so that the temple was never plagued by mice or rats. Young men would sprawl on the temple steps, too, it was said, trading stories of courting their lovers.

And the Keeper said that any light that touched those stone steps was sacred. Light that touched Elgar’nan’s temple could be captured in a clay jar. And if that jar was buried in the earth for a fortnight, the jar would absorb the lullaby of Elgar’nan’s mother, the Earth.

Then the jar would sing when shaken.

Pangara’s mother had said that her great-grandfather had once had one of the singing jars. “But,” her mother had finished the story, shaking her head, “it shattered when I dropped it. I was very young and should not have touched what I was told not to touch.”

And then she had swatted Pangara’s hands away, again, from her canning jars.

Pangara remembered how the light had shone through the glass. It touched the grass in many colors.

“Inquisitor.”

“Please, Solas.”

“Come, Inquisitor.”

Yet she lingered. The spectacle of Elgar’nan’s temple had been burned in the first Exalted March. The temple itself had been broken, though the walls enclosing the gardens still stood solid. First one palace and then another had been built here. Pangara imagined the old stone arches bricked over and painted white. She thought of remnants of the temple floors hauled away in carts and delicate tiles imported from northern Orlais. Young emperors in blue summer suits catching lizards on the steps and small, cherub-cheeked empresses-to-be riding ponies over the jars that must still sit, cold and abandoned, in the wet earth.

The night was dark.

“The Ambassador would like to speak with you,” Solas said. And then he added, his tone distant, uninvested. “I would be pleased to see you inside.”

She looked at him and wondered if he’d ever dreamed in Halamshiral. Had he seen the temple that had stood here, where now a palace reused its ancient stones? Hints of the grand architecture of their people remained in the steps and arches. She wanted to ask him, but something stopped her. He looked taller in dress uniform. His chin was high, jaw sharp, a distracted longdog look glittering in the blue of his eyes. They stood before the gates of the Winter Palace and she saw him changing the way she saw Sera or Cole change right before they melded with the shadows: hunter’s eyes, prowling.

She suppressed a shiver.

The night was cool.

Pangara knew she looked tired already. She felt the strain under her smile.

“Masks on so soon?” she asked, and lightly touched his arm.

Her ‘elven manservant’ bowed and donned his cap. And, for a moment, when he looked down at her, his smile was gentle.

–

The evening had been long. Accords reached, arrests made, and servants scrubbing the sting of blood from the palace walls.

The Game played. Just another night of death in the Dales.

And now, how long the night would be.

When Solas left her on the balcony Pangara was dizzy and cold, trying to make the stars stay in one place in the night sky. She leaned against the wall and breathed and tried not to feel like this whole place was a graveyard, remembering the look in his eyes.

“Snowlace room,” he had breathed into her neck, and then wrenched away and left her. He had been sensual. Then urgent. When he walked away his gait was stiff.

The Game played on through the rooms of the Winter Palace and in the gardens below.

Courtiers milled in the halls. Their skirts fluttered and slid on the floors. Pangara passed Leliana and the Spymaster said a few low words to her, a pointed, “Enjoying the music?” Just to let her know that their dance had been seen, had been noted, and was likely already the subject of gossip. The low titters of Dukes and Duchesses echoed off the gilded ceilings. Pangara walked down one hall, then another. Visible in the courtyard through the windows, a fountain was the playground of four young women putting on a wild show. They pressed wine glasses to each others’ lips, then passed around a pink-and-white box of what Pangara had been told was lotus snuff.

She felt the fear pulling tight once more - like a metal snake rising through her guts and then holding her heart. Masks. And too many limbs, and too much noise; someone’s voluminous sleeve rubbed her arm and she recoiled from even this slight touch. She felt as if the front of her body detached from the back; it was only the feel of her feet hitting the floor that kept her from floating away, uniting her two halves.

She passed a dozen doors.

She found him seated in the snowlace room.

It had been aptly named. Two doors down from yet another of the endless libraries and adjacent to a blue room and a room filled with stuffed fennecs. In this room, every surface was covered in the delicate white and tan snowlace. The chairs were upholstered in it. The walls were patterned with it. The mantle was covered in it.

Solas faced the door on a white plush chair, leaning his elbows on his knees, one knuckle resting on his lips.

Was it nervousness, the way his leg bobbed, just for a second? He leaned back and his hands spread wide on his knees. He nodded to the chair across from him.

“Sit. You have earned rest.”

She struggled to come back to herself.

“Josephine insists the feasting will last until dawn.”

“True enough. Their appetites will sustain many more intrigues.” She caught him giving her that intense, almost-pained look as she sat across from him, the one that made her feel like she was the only thing he’d ever wanted to see, his whole life spent waiting to look at her. Just as quickly it was gone, replaced with a small half-smile. “And many more indiscretions.”

The fire warmed her front. It lit him from behind. Their teasing had been all half-steps and words that meant other things; he had made promises under promises that made her reel to wonder at what he intended for her tonight. Here in this place of power; old powers, new powers. He’d placed his cap aside. She felt the tug of him on her skin. She wanted his breath inside hers again, like he had been so close to her on the balcony, pressing his body against hers, pressing his length against her thigh, pressing his thigh between her legs…

A hundred perfumes made the air feel close and heady.

“You dance like your feet are underwater,” she said, relief of her feet relaxing as she toed out of her boots.

“Ha! Is that a compliment?”

“Do you need compliments?”

“I do not need them, but any man would thrive under your good opinion.”

“So, all you seek is my good opinion?”

She accepted the glass of wine he passed to her, drank deep. She needed to be steady and this was the last thing that would help, but it felt good to sink further. She felt safe again, near him. The panic had receded; it was quieter in this room. He was here. He was solid. She was left only with the queer sense of unreality.

“That, and other things.”

His lip twitched. She leaned back into the chair. Her back was to the door.

“My opinion is that though you are my advisor, you have yet to impress me sufficiently. Advise me,” she said.

Whatever she had expected, it was not for him to lean forward and tilt his head and say, “Well. If you should like to learn how to relax among the halls of power, then loosen the ties of your trousers.”

Pangara stared at him.

He was unnaturally still, except for his eyes, which narrowed in greater and greater mirth.

“That,” she said slowly, “is a strange invitation to dance.”

“Note the eyes of the painting above the mantle? Some second cousin of some twice-removed aunt. I blocked the spyholes with felandaris. We enjoy more privacy here than on the balcony. Leliana needn’t worry. Of course,” the hot carelessness of his tone returned, the ease of wine showing in his pinked ears and how his smile loosened, “We are not entirely alone, either. I was not under the impression that such things bothered you.”

”Your impressions are fine,” she conceded.

She knew he knew that this excited her. The crowd; present, but distant. The nobles unsuspecting. Debauchery in the lavish, overwrought world of their ridiculous Game.

She felt her heart pounding. It hurt, in her chest. She felt again that the sky spun; only this time when she looked up it was gilded inlays against white plaster.

Had this been where priests kneeled in supplication? Had the nobility of the Dales held their tongues here under the branding of their vallaslin?

She dropped her hand to her lap.

His gaze followed.

She tilted the wine glass in her other hand, the mark shining up through the red. And when he glanced back up at her his gaze was all lechery and challenge. When she really looked at him, when he looked at her like this, in this place where once the divine dwelled, she did not know if he appeared to her more like a priest, or a prince.

She moved for him like a supplicant. Heart thudding, she pulled her laces loose.

She watched his throat bob. He nodded. His eyes were intent on her lap.

“Touch yourself,” he said, low.

She did.

Under his gaze, she slipped her hand below her trousers and into her smalls. She caressed the heat between her legs, found her clit, and pressed.

“Good,” he murmured.

Was his voice strangled? She hardly noticed, rubbing herself in slow circles; she was under his guard and suddenly more at ease than she had been all night. She was almost surprised to find how quickly her body sank into the familiar, relaxing rhythm, even here: in this seat of shems all warring for power of state.

The fire was hot. It brought a heat like sun against her skin.

“What do you want…?” she asked.

“Lay back. Close your eyes. Then continue as you are.”

She adjusted as he asked. She brought one foot up to the seat, finding her breathing deeper and better. The scents of perfumes did not bother her as much. Instead she smelled oak smoking in the fireplace. With her eyes closed, she heard the flames crackling behind him. It was soothing.

“Harder,” his voice was low, but came into the dark space of her mind clearly.

She increased her pace.

Warmth spread through her limbs. Her arm ached lightly; it was a good, familiar feeling. She felt her body canting up, thrusting.

She imagined him watching her. She thought of his eyes: their pinched shape and blue-violet color, his stern nose, the plush of his lips. She remembered him bent over her, lifting her as he’d kissed her on the balcony.

She moaned gently, and then snapped her eyes open.

“Yes.” He was grinning. It was slight, but she could tell. His legs were crossed at the knee and he was leaned to one side in the chair. His fingers curled over his lips.

“Continue.”

She did not close her eyes again. She watched him watching her. He seemed to enjoy this very much, and the intensity of his eyes on hers had her close to the precipice in moments. Her fingers jerked over her clit. The velvet of her trousers moved over her hand. The smell of smoke and the sound of the fire filled her; the room seemed brighter, clearer, and Solas nodded slowly.

“Good. More.”

And then, from the hall behind her, she heard a haughty, screeching voice: “I am certain I saw the Inquisitor in _one of these rooms,_ my dear, we _must_ introduce ourselves.”

Pangara stuttered to a halt and started to sit up, but Solas put a forbidding hand in the air between them.

“Continue,” he said.

“Solas…”

“Continue.”

Swallowing, she kept her eyes trained on his. She did as he asked. She buried her fingers back into her smalls, feeling her cheeks grow hot as her body tensed and the voices came near. She had slid low as she touched herself in the seat of the high-backed chair; she only guessed that this would hide her from the door.

“I’m just dying to meet one. Imagine! Right out of the legends, a real Dalish!”

The voice was coming closer.

“Solas,” she said, urgent. He was smiling visibly now, well-pleased, his foot tapping lightly in the air.

Her body filled with a low, ringing song. Her smalls were soaked; she could hear herself, the sop of her heat louder with each frantic pulse of her fingers.

“Solas,” she begged. She heard footsteps in the hall.

“Inquisitor.”

“Please, Solas.”

“Come, Inquisitor.”

Her release crested through her body, her belly, limbs, and brain, and filled her mind with fuzzy heat. She was vaguely aware of Solas surging up from his chair and walking briskly past.

She stifled a panting moan. She rode her euphoria, sweating and hot, hand spasming on her clit. She heard him say, “Ah, Duke. Duchess. I serve the Inquisitor. She has awaited the chance to lead your wife on the dance floor, Your Grace. Might I beg your dance card? I will make her mark.”

Feeling sluggish, the world coalescing back around her slowly, Pangara shuffled at her clothing. She nudged the trousers back up her legs, knotted the clasps and re-tucked her undershirt. She rubbed the slick from her hand into the lace cushion of the chair. And when she was presentable, she pushed forward and pressed her feet back into her boots.

“Duchess Prendre, Inquisitor,” Solas announced as she stood.

The room had snapped to clarity. Infused with ease, power and satisfaction sang through her body. She stepped to the Duke and Duchess. The smile came easily.

“A pleasure.” Her eyes slid to Solas.

He bowed his head, lips twitching.

“She does speak!” Duchess Prendre trilled. “You do know the language of the Empire, yes? And so well!”

“Now, _pet,_ ” the Duke said, and the nobles fussed in a quick and hissing argument behind their masks.

Pangara looked inside herself and tried to find the threads of her anxiety. It had gone. She felt grounded, peace flourishing inside her body and mind. She still felt her heartbeat pounding in her throat. 

She was warm.

As he stepped by her Solas said, quietly and in simple Elven, his breath sweet with wine, “I will find you in the garden.”


End file.
